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To me, it's not the same. This is an issue that impacts atheists, Christians, Muslims, plastic lovers (even if they won't admit it), and non-plastic lovers. You can't escape a plastic bottle in a landfill and the toxins leaching into our groundwater no matter your belief system, likes or dislikes.

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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I oppose plastic containers across the board. I think all of us do that are writing about this particular bottling plant. We'd all love to see alternative packaging for any product. In this case, we can already get this product from a tap... you can't get orange juice from a tap.

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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I was rinsing out the plastic baggies that I have from getting dried cranberries at the grocery store when I heard the topic of today's show. Did you know that you can find Nestle baby formula on the sparsley stocked stands of street vendors on the main streets of West African villages. Since when did babies not need the known benefits of a mother's breast milk? Over there it's a status symbol to use powdered baby formula. See the parallel? Good marketing sells everyone, even those in great need, a bill of goods that isn't really to their benefit.

But that aside, I rinse those baggies because I think there's far too much plastic in the world. With a 4-year-old, I think about how this earth must be in decent shape to host her for the next hopefully 95 years or so. And that doesn't even consider the notion of her having her own family and so on and so on. Plastic bottles of water just don't figure into the equation of sustainability. Why on earth would anyone consider expanding this industry anywhere? Even in economic hard times.

Get creative. Insist that Nestle get creative with eliminating plastic. And yes, determine the real impact any such plant would have on the local community beyond the immediate gain of tax revenue. Only if the pieces add up to a long-term, sustainable solution on all conceivable fronts should a town consider moving ahead with such a plant.

Thanks for listening.

posted 2 years, 11 months ago
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